Weekend WIP

I finally got around to painting some Infinity stuff. I've been nervous about painting them for a while after chatting with the guy at work who encouraged me back to the game as he is pretty handy with his airbrush. With my experience so far and what turns out to be pretty shaky painting hands I'm not sure I'm going to achieve the same results for a while... I'm happy to use it for mass basecoating though to save time and work from there.

So I got a 'test model' painted. Vanguard hacker who I wouldn't have minded having to strip the paint off as I can't see it being very commonly fielded. I really like the way it has come together, other than wanting to start from a darker grey to highlight up next time.

The backpack, and power nodes on larger models will get the OSL treatment from the airbrush, which I'm going to practice on something else next time I get everything setup :)
I'm not sure if anything else needs doing to the base, like a different colour in the gaps between hexes, but I will be coming back to do some weathering at least.

Which leads me onto the next picture.

These are the two bases for the remotes which I'd never be able to paint once when were based :) I originally had them quite a blue grey which I wanted to shade down, but decided on a contrasting colour for the blue armour, and plumped for the yellowy brown. I've added some scratches and sponged on some dark brown weathering type effects. I will highlight some of the dings and scratches and maybe add some rust or something similar as well :)

I'm looking forward to translating the colour scheme to the larger Morats and adapting it for the Unidrons etc as well. Hoping to get some airbrush time in either on Wednesday evening or at the weekend to get everything blued up

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Canned

I recently picked up some scenery that I have been on the lookout for a while. I saw these bad boys, and later these but was reluctant to order something fragile from overseas and risk damage after paying a decent amount in shipping/customs. I dismissed the idea pretty much entirely until I stumbled across this ebay listing. At that price, I couldn't resist and bought a set of 3 plain ones and a set of 3 with the walkway.

Don't get me wrong, I'd much prefer the Promethium Forge kits, but at this price, these are absolutely fantastic. They were a little tricky to assemble, and the 'instructions' were just pictures of the parts and the finished product, but once I had done one of each, the rest was fine. I really like the look of these, and have some green stuff fans and vents cast up from instamold ready to embellish them with as well as ideas for painting and weathering for the cans.

Again, for the price I love these kits and think they look great. I'll probably set them up in pairs or threes to mix up the two different types. These will also do just fine for either Infinity or Necromunda.

I'm going to start grabbing bits for an infinity table each payday hopefully, to spread the cost a bit. This ebay seller is going to be doing kits for vertical cans so I hope they look like what I'm after and I will probably grab those too. Especially since I have pretty much all the Morats I want (for now!) and definitely have enough for a lot of choice at 300 points.

Thanks for Stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Payload

I feel like I was quite restrained on Payday:

After a pretty good weekend of assembling and base prep, I got to the below stage with Unidrons ready for magnets, Vanguard weapons team ready to be pinned to bases for detail to be added, and Sogarat, Doctor Worm , and Raicho Pilot all ready to be attache to bases and then detailed.

I did take a look at the Drone box, but there are a lot of components in there and I couldn't face it after cleaning and assembling the rest so they are a project for this week.

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

The Living Infinite - Rule of Cool

Running with the momentum from the intro games last week, I sat down and started on the next couple of additions to my force. The Oznat did well, with smoke being useful, and the Vulkan shotgun being impressive. The 'Hungries' are models that filled me with dread when I unwrapped them from eBay as they are very spindly and wouldn't be able to be realistically pinned to the bases due to the small contact points. However, they were well assembled so I left them how they were and re-attached the two missing heads.
I took inspiration from Ash Barker's basing method for Infinity models from his blog as this would fit pretty well around the awkward attachment points

I added plasticard in layers, and later clipped/cut/sanded it as flush as possible to the bases, I also later added the white texture paste from Vallejo that I've been using a lot recently, although that isn't pictured. This also helped mask sloppy joins in between off cuts of card.

Also featured here is my Evil space wizard Umbra Legate, who I'm looking forward to painting, even though he doesn't really fit into a force currently. He can however form a Harris link with Xeodrons...
I seem to have got the hang of the press mold for the Hex bases, and the other half of the base will be made up in plasticard and texture paste like the others.

There's another guy at work who is interested in Infinity, and he came to watch our game last week. I think he is more interested in painting really more than anything but he is going to borrow some Nomads to play me in another learner game hopefully soon. More games for me, more Infinity friends altogether ^_^

I've been reading the Infinity wiki in lunchtimes/during my commute in the hope of getting the hang of things like suppression & fireteams. It's hard going but I think it's something that I need to see in action before it will really click. There's no rush though and no need to run before i'm done (re)learning to walk.

That said though, there is a tournament this weekend which my friend is going to, and another one in April for the Infinity Northern Alliance based here in Leeds. I'm tempted to sign up for the April one as a target to paint/learn for but I wondered about maybe the one after that as a more realistic target.
The Infinity tournament scene seems to be a lot more welcoming than any other I've participated in and is definitely something I want to participate in, even as just a way of getting some games in and meeting opponents :)

Thanks for Stopping by
Lofty

Fresh Air

I promised that I would get some airbrushing done over the break. I tried talking myself out of it for various reasons like the time taken to set it up, finding all the bits and bobs, etc. In the end I managed to see through my own weak excuses and got everything plugged in, sorted and ready to go.

Although it's still a temporary setup, and goes away again after use, the booth & compressor setup easily and without a great deal of fuss to be honest.

The newer of the two airbrushes works just fine with whatever needle/nozzle combo it ended up with, and in general is a more pleasant tool to use than the first cheap brush I bought.
I wanted to at least make a start on the Morats, and after touching up the coat of black primer with VMA Black, I went ahead and primed a mix of VMA black Primer and VMA Grey primer from 45 degrees to help with shading. I mixed this originally for the Titania crew models I wanted to include in this session. I then basecoated the blue I had picked out for some of the armour panels on the Morats and used the rest on the Gorar from the Titania box before the heat cutout on the Compressor stopped the whole thing short.

A couple of learning points from the whole thing. First being that if I have a list of models which I want to get done, with relevant colours, I can be more efficient. The amount of primer I had mixed was more than enough for what I wanted to get painted so I was looking for more models to undercoat in order to not waste it.

The second is that I want to get 'proper' airbrush versions of colours which I will use often through the airbrush. the dilution of blue I used for the Morats seemed fine on them (although it maybe wants a second coat) but when I used it on the Plastic Gorar, it seemed to run off a bit? this is possible due to using flow improver rather than airbrush thinner/water but isn't ideal nonetheless.

All in all, a successful attempt, and promising for future uses. I don't think the airbrush I have is really suitable for anything other than basecoats really, or my use of it isn't at any rate. I want to speak to my Infinity buddy at work when he is back off leave to see what his airbrush is like :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Seasons Gamings

We started a tradition last year to meet up with friends and play Malifaux around Xmas. We were at Element Games on Sunday to do just that :)

I faced both a new opponent (master) - Ironsides and a new opponent playing Pandora.

I took a fixed Justice list to both games, mainly to check out her new upgrades and the Death Marshall recruiter, and also because I was honestly expecting to face a lot more rezzers but I lucked out and drew the two opponents that weren't playing Rezzers :p

I did teach my Ironsides opponent to fear the Lady, and downed her in two attacks through the non charge bonus on her great blade plus the bonus flips from the Swordmaster upgrade. The red joker on the second damage flip sealed the deal but was over kill at that point :p

Pandora was hell. I have some really un-fond memories of playing my friends Pandora crew when it was his first master, misery, web weaver, sorrows. All that fun stuff combined with some daft placing on my first couple of activations made this a real chore to be honest. I won't say much more other than that I need to learn to block LoS and not have models too far forward when they don't need to be. Play the long game lofty :)

I also got my required models primed on Saturday, and kept working on the Raicho, including a bit of a treat working on his base.

The Press mold for the base is still quite tricky, and the picture doesn't really show it turning out better than I expected. I'm still not really a fan and for the first time in a long while I'm tempted to buy some bases for miniatures, as I don't think I can continue this method but want to maintain the hex pattern bases. I added a small fan, and two resin plugs from Zinge industries, connected by guitar string, and lowered a section of the base as I have seen this done on some bases available to buy and really like the extra dimension of the base.

I originally planned to grab some infinity stuff at Element games, and save the postage, but I couldn't quite bring myself to add to the pile of unpainted miniatures in the end which I guess I should be pleased about :p

Looking forward to getting started painting again over the festive break, so watch this space :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

The Living Infinite - Breaking Ground

After speaking to my friend at work about Infinity, I decided it was high time to stop procrastinating and get my models at least based. In the light of some of the newer released models as well, I need to get painting before I can add to my collection (oh hey, TAGs, Avatar and Charontids in time for Xmas?!).

I retried the basing pads I got from Kickstarter, and had a lot more success this time around. I think mainly because the texture is completely flat, unlike the rocky/mountain surface of the last one I tried. I couldn't bring myself to break apart the base I put so much time into for the Sogarat though so he's staying on his lovingly crafted base.
This week I will pin the arms on the grunts, as I don't think it'll make a huge amount if difference to painting them really.

Just a small update for now, planning continues for gaming room, and Bloodbowl team is based now.

Not sure when I will get a chance to prime anything anytime soon as the weather has taken a cold snap here recently, but we have just cleared out the basement a bit so maybe I can get down there at some point...

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Changing Rooms

Both the Bloodbowl kind and the fact that we are changing our room use in our house. It's good word play, I promise.

Anyway, 'Unnamed Orc Bloodbowl team' (catchy right? Go sports) is now complete, with 4 Blitzers, 4 Black Orcs, 2 Throwers and 6 Linemen before the spare orc parts ran out. There's maybe the option of one more lineman if some already built unpainted spares get sacrificed.

All that's left is picking a paint scheme, and adding magnets and sand to the bases. All in all very pleased at how they look. They aren't ground breaking conversions but they were fun to make and it's great to work on a project that has an end point.

Some of the newer Bloodbowl miniatures are nice enough to be tempting if the league goes on enough to start a second team, but for now these will do great.

The other exciting topic is our 'new gaming room'. After getting some measurements we (my very organised other half) mocked up room/furniture sizes to help plan better and the verdict is that necessary furniture items (stupid big bed/wardrobe) will fit into other rooms, allowing the biggest room in the loft to be re purposed.

Current mock up resembles the below. Plus bookcases/shelving added:

The conundrum now, other than planning the other rooms/buying shelving etc, is how to deal with the gaming table. The current set up is two 6foot by 2foot boards which bolt together down the middle to make a 6*4. This was made a while back by a friend of mine's dad for the attic of our old house, to sit on trestle legs. Due to space restrictions in our current house, this usually sits on the kitchen table to provide a play area, but the boards are no longer flat after being propped against a wall in between uses.

There are a few solutions so far:

Buy legs and attach them to these boards

Start from scratch and buy new wood/trestle legs/permanent legs

????

Some options to consider, but until we have the space free upstairs, we wont know whether or not the boards will straighten themselves out once there is room to lie them flat for a while.

Exciting times though :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Grass Roots

Another long gap between posts, for which I apologise.

Wedding/Best man duties are completely out of the way now after an absolutely phenomenal weekend.

During some downtime both over the wedding weekend/whilst the groom and I were at a loose end when the bridesmaids were sorting themselves out we managed to get a few half games of Bloodbowl played as a time filler. There are enough of us that are nostalgic about this that it looks like we will be playing a league of some sort. It's also a great game to play with very little setup, in a fixed time frame.

I've decided i'm going to run an orc team which I've made a start on. I wanted to make the max number of all available player options. I was still pretty tired after we arrived home on Monday, but was determined to make use of the spare time and nearly finished the Black Orcs/Blitzers for the team.

They aren't groundbreaking conversions by any means, but it was a lot of fun actually creating something again after so long with so little time.

Before we went away for the weekend, I was also talking a lot with the chap at work who plays infinity, and we are going to be playing a demo game or two on some spare tables at work on an unused floor. I got told that there's no chance that any of my regular gaming friends are interested in it, but I'm happy for a game every now and then, and collecting the models to be honest :)

Work/planning still ongoing for moving rooms around but hopefully we can start working towards this in earnest a the weekend now that our time is our own again. The only thing we have on for a while is the house being remortgaged but that's not really so intensive as the solicitors are dealing with it all.

Good to be back, and hopefully more regular updates on the way :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Preparation

Saturday yielded some pretty good progress, with 4 Guild Hounds, Kamaitachi, & 3 Terracota Warriors assembled & based (except for sand/texture paste). The hounds bases needed a 'lever' in the same way as the watcher/Guardians for Hoffman due to tiny contact points on the base. The levers are more subtle, with bits of broken fence/building rather than full on sewer pipes as the models are pretty agnostic of any of my guild crews at the moment, and 'McCabe' is primarily desert/wasteland based. I didn't really have an opportunity to airbrush on Saturday. My wife was busy preparing for a stall on Sunday and the cats were shut out of the kitchen, so I didn't want to stress them out any more by making weird noises and smells whilst they sat in the study with me.

All models for the guild apart from Lucius & lawyers, Nino, Governers proxy, Mounted Rollins Black, Iggy Pup & the Ramone sisters are also now pinned to (magnetised) bases ready to hit the table. I got pretty sick of all the new stuff I had bought just sitting in a drawer waiting to be painted, and having so little time recently. The Wild Ones models need a little bit of paint on what will be impossible to reach places once they are based, but after that I'm happy to continue painting them once they are based. Nino also has a pose which creates impossible to reach areas once based, so he needs a little work before basing. The other models simply aren't a priority right now so don't have a base ready to go on.

We have a holiday coming up from 21st September - 2nd October, so in and between sorting things out for that, I will be continuing to prep models for table time, and maybe even get some painting done during any longer times I find myself with for hobbying :)

Lists are definitely the devil it seems, having good intentions is one thing but listing what I aim to get done seems to invite something to crop up and prevent me from having the time. I need to rethink this idea for the blog, as I still want to list progress & what's on the table so to speak but it isn't working out brilliantly in its current format.

Malifaux bootcamp was cancelled due to dates confusion, but I'm still taking my guild to play this Saturday evening for a couple of games, so the expanded collection will be good to have for that.

I was thinking about what I could do to get better at the game, and thought that having cards models in deck boxes makes it a real faff to look through and read abilities etc, so I had a look on Amazon for a card binder and ended up with an A4 and A5 one of these which I really like, and enables me to flick through and ready cards easily, and see upgrades at the same time too.

Ours is The Fury

Tenuous post title at best. I'm away on a stag weekend as of tomorrow, so I won't have any time to sit and paint or otherwise make any hobby progress, except maybe some assembly/basing this evening.

After airbrushing recently, and having a much better time of it with the smaller needle (or maybe it's the better airbrush) I felt empowered to try something a little more involved with the airbrush than just base coating. The flow control felt good, and the results were pleasing, so I look forward to getting the brush out on something a little larger, maybe the Eldar vehicles which I currently have WIP. I'm not sure when this will be, but October will hopefully be a lot quieter, and allow chance for a lot more hobby time (we are away for ten days towards the end of September).

I was also reading around some of the new Wave 5 upgrades & models, as well as seeing some of (presumably) Wave 4 models used in a battle report which made me really want to get my recruiters finished, and get back in to gaming regularly full stop. It seems to be the first aspect of the hobby that suffers when time is of the essence.

Another busy couple of weeks meaning that setting up some hobby space for an hour or so has lost out to easy, quick computer game sessions, this time I've fired up Mordheim again with the Witch Hunters DLC. Admittedly I'm already planning on going back to a Mercenary warband, but hopefully the Witch Hunters will capture my interest a little more before too long.

Not much actual content again, for which I can only apologise but the end of the year should allow for a lot more :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Quick Work

After a good weekend, despite not being at home very much, and a music festival providing a strange morning/evening routine with bands on until late, I did manage to get done the airbrushing I planned previously.

The 5mm needle in the older brush is far too big, it throws out gallons per seconds worth of paint, only some of which gets on the model of course due to a wide spray cone versus a relatively narrow model profile. The Ortegas that got sprayed took a whole heap of paint, but when using the 3mm needle in the newer brush (being too lazy to clean out the brush for a second colour had a surprising benefit), the paint is much more targeted, and didn't really take that much longer. Coupled with the fact that less paint overall was used for only one good coat instead of multiple brush coats, I'd call this a win! This doesn't seem like much at all, and is far from exemplary use of an airbrush, but it's progress, and saved time :)

There are a couple of further notes I'd like to make at this point about the equipment I'm currently using.

First off, the airbrush booth doesn't seem to drag away a massive amount of the paint... This is either because I still hold the miniatures i'm working on quite close to me whilst working, or for other as yet unknown reasons. Also, probably because of the sheer output of the 5mm needle, there was some paint which made it through the gaps in the fold out parts of the booth and onto my desk. This was easily cleaned with some airbrush cleaning fluid on some paper towel, though so not a massive issue. Lastly some paint DOES still come out of the filter at the back, so unless the booth is venting out of the window using the parts provided, some paper behind the vent at the back is necessary to preserver whatever might be behind the booth in your setup (my monitors/items on the monitor shelf).

Second, the newer airbrush is far superior to the first one I bought. It feels smoother in the trigger, and paint flow, and clogs less which is a huge plus! It says something that the older brush clogged more with VMA paint and paint thinner than the newer brush did with VGC paint and thinner...

Lastly, regardless of using an airbrush booth or not, ALWAYS wear a filter mask. This is probably related to my holding miniatures so close to me still while working on them, but I felt a bit light headed after I was done, and breathing in atomised airbrush thinner can't be good for any aspect of health really. Look after your lungs!

Dragon Knights - Aspects of War

Free time seems increasingly difficult to come by recently which is harrowing after crappy days at work. Hobby time is zen. Anyhow, over the last week or so, progress has been made;

Howling Banshee

The original fluff/concept outlined outlined for this project all those years ago (4 years!) a few plans for different adapted aspects. Howling banshees brazenly taken from this genius imitation and flattery at work. Perhaps the fluff & concept background will get a prose overhaul soon, rather than the musings from last post.

Warp Spiders (still WIP)

Inspired in no small part by these

The legs have been changed, but no heads yet while a good option is sourced. Either Guardian helmets with added mandibles, or the smooth masked Dark Eldar pilot heads. The helmets will also then have the warp spider run decal added.

Both aspect warriors also look 'dark' enough to be used as a counts'as option in a Dark Eldar force. The Banshees could easily be Incubi/Wyches or something if need be, and the Warp Spiders could be Trueborn perhaps. Being more familiar with the rules entries for Dark Eldar might help with better comparisons, but the point still stands :)

Next up, will be some Shining Spears adaptations. Hopefully there will be either an easy way to use the Dark Elf knights legs without it looking too fantasy, or perhaps combined with Dire Avenger bodies, these will look suitably space aged. After all, the Jetbike Autarch needs a bodyguard.
Also on the list are Rangers, Warlocks including one or two mounted options and maybe a mounted Farseer but that's less likely. I also have plans for some Incubi conversions, but I might wait until the rumoured 'Aeldari' release in July is a bit more concrete so as to avoid making proxies for potentially awesome new kits :)

Oh, also this lot:

Hoping also to get some more airbrush time in this weekend, coupled with a first game of 8th with a friend :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Mixed Bag

Had another airbrush session today, and the bigger needle definitely helped with getting a good coverage.  I got the Wraithknight, and two dragons undercoated black, and then a really nice pale brown basecoat on the wing membranes of the dragons.

After that though, it all seemed to go wrong. The red I then wanted to add to the scaly parts of the dragons went on really watery, and im pretty disappointed, not really even sure how to salvage it either. I need to do some reading.

I did get a decent basecoat of red/brown on the wraithlord though to later highlight with red :)

Weekly Progress

I've been really ill this week. I've had Tinnitus for a few months, but this week I've had earache dizziness and migraines to go with it, so I've missed the past two days at work, which I hate doing as it means someone else has to pick up my projects.

The silver lining of course is that I've had a little extra time to spend on hobbying. I've gone a bit crazy with the pipes/tubes on my Eldar 'Vehicles' but I wanted to avoid the feeling that the weapon mounts were just stuck to the back of a dragon, so I have tried to imply that they have a power source somewhere else on the model. I'm going to add some small sections of plasticard tubes on the cabling to break up the longer patches, and maybe insinuate protection for what looks to be quite vulnerable power lines. I've also tried to cover up the riderless saddle with varying degrees of success. The Dark Elf dragon variation looks pretty self contained without any of the above so I've just left it as-is, using the Wraithknight secondary weapon mounts, plus some armour on the back.

I'm also done with the Wraithknight now, except for some gap filling on the more ill-fitting parts that I have added recently but it's no more than a few minutes work, along with blending some of the more disparate joins.
I'm really pleased  with this as I think it looks a suitably less advanced/low tech answer to the model for an Exodite force, as well as a kind of life support system for the ancient dragon.

I'm going to try and get some bases made for the Thunderwolf Cavalry and mounted Lord model ready for an exciting new development which I will hopefully be able to share this weekend...

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Dragon Knights - March to war

As I said in Junes plannign post, I'm trying to get my Eldar ready for the new edition as I have the least to do on them. To this end, I spent some time on Monday (in between finding and trying to fix a leaky water pipe...) making sure all the Wave serpents had switchable weapon options, which they now do. Part of this was overcoming what to do with the Dark Elf dragon variant which is different enough from the others to be a bit of a pain with positioning. In the end the pieces I have used I think look great, and the gun mounts are I think from the Wraithknight kit.

The real progress however is on the man himself... I was stumped for what to do to detail the Wraithknight really as I had a basic idea with the armour and pose etc but it just looked like it was sitting on the dragon part of the model with no integration. I wanted to try and use guitar-string cabling, but didn't have any thick enough, and it isn't really easy to use for anything other than it's intended purpose.
I broke out my Greenstuff roll maker and started making rolls, initially thinking they would't be long enough for what I wanted. I threw caution to the wind and just started adding them to the model, and I think the results speak for themselves.

I added some more parts to the back of the carapace today and want to add a few more cables to integrate the 'power plant' I added but all in all I'm over the moon with how it looks currently :)

There are lots of rules leaks going around currently, and to be honest it's all pretty meaningless to me. The min-maxers are out in force though saying what's useless and what isn't. I'm just looking forward to getting some games with a 'new' force :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty